


Barren ocean

by Underthegallowws



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 13:08:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13365360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Underthegallowws/pseuds/Underthegallowws
Summary: The drift is all about sharing your mind with someone else. It’s about holding their thoughts, and their memories, and everything that they are, and trying to find a balance with your owns. It’s about being a tightrope walker, and trying to hold someone’s hand through it.But it worked. They worked together. Because Theo might have been an agitated sea, with waves rushing all around, but Tara was the shore. Tara was his shore, and she took everything he had inside him, she took all the emotions and the traumas. She took it all, and gave nothing back but calm, peace, and trust.- -Thiam movie AU fest - Thursday, Jan 11: Sy-fy/Fantasy





	Barren ocean

As long as Theo remembers, his whole life has been a drift.

 

He was born in the middle of winter, while Kaijus were already destroying city after city. He was born in a country that was looking for a solution, any solution, to fight the growing menace. He was born in a family destroyed by that war, in a house that never felt like home.

 

But he was born with a sister. And that was enough.

 

* * *

 

Tara and Theo.

 

Theo and Tara.

 

The two faces of the same coin.

 

Theo knows the way he was raised up is far from normal. Usually, kids go to school. They make friends. They learn English, and Maths, and they fail, they get bad grades, and good ones. They grow. 

 

But for the Raeken’s children, school was a dark room inside a governmental complex. Teachers were army people, and lessons had nothing to do with trigonometry. Kaijus were complicated things, and research was lacking in more than one matter. Still, they had everything to learn.

 

Strategy courses.

 

Physical preparation.

 

And, meditation.

 

Theo never liked meditation. He thrived in strategy, and in physical. But meditation… It was Tara’s thing.

 

* * *

 

Drifting with Tara felt so organic. 

 

The drift is all about sharing your mind with someone else. It’s about holding their thoughts, and their memories, and everything that they are, and trying to find a balance with your owns. It’s about being a tightrope walker, and trying to hold someone’s hand through it. 

 

But it worked. They worked together. Because Theo might have been an agitated sea, with waves rushing all around, but Tara was the shore. Tara was his shore, and she took everything he had inside him, she took all the emotions and the traumas. She took it all, and gave nothing back but calm, peace, and trust.

 

* * *

 

Theo was brilliant, they said.

 

Tara was excellent, they whispered.

 

And together… Together, they were perfect.

 

* * *

 

Losing Tara was not like losing a limb, to Theo. No, he could have lived without an arm, or a leg. Sure, it would have hurt, and he would have had to adapt but … He would have survived.

 

Losing Tara was like losing himself, losing everything he had, and everything he was. It was like being chewed up, and spit out, and left with nothing but an heavy emptiness, and a pain that he wished would have been physical. Doctors can help with physical pain. But what Theo felt ? Nobody could ever understand, less help. 

 

They were siblings. They were best friends.

They were partners.

 

They were fighting a level two Kaiju. One of those not strong enough to be considered a level three, but still bad enough that they had to make sure they did not make any mistake.

 

Theo did not make mistake. Usually.

 

There is a second, a long second, during which he can physically feel that something is wrong. They are usually so in synch. That’s why they pilot together. That’s why they are good.

 

There is a whole second, a second he has come to cherish, because it’s the last one he spent with her. A long second, that makes sense to him, and at the same time, is the beginning of the end.

 

She is ripped from him. She is ripped from the Jaeger, from his left side, from the side where she has always stood. She is ripped from his heart, and it does not make sense anymore. She is lost to a battle that he thought he could win.

 

The Jaeger is destroyed.

 

But Theo ? Oh, Theo is annihilated.

 

* * *

 

They find him, afterwards. They find him in the broken carcass of a Jaeger that does not move anymore. That does not live anymore. Next to a body that does not breathe.

 

Next to the sister he nearly had.

 

Theo is barely alive himself, his left side shred to tears, and his soul broken to his core.

 

They find him, but he never gets back.

 

* * *

 

Everything is a blur, then.

 

They take care of him. They try to heal his body. 

 

Theo used to be a fighter. He is not, anymore. He can’t fight for a world where Tara, the sweet, the beautiful, the very alive Tara, is not anymore.

 

It’s like he does not want to get better. It’s like he does not want to survive this.

 

Scratch that. 

 

He does not want to survive this.

 

* * *

 

It take them a very long time, but in the end, he can walk again. He can speak again. His body is fully healed now, but Theo is an empty shell, walking in the thick fog that is his life at the base. He agrees to the physical exercise, because it helps. It helps, being exhausted in the end of the day, physically worn out. It helps, being so tired that he just has to lay in his bed in order to fall asleep.

 

It should help, at least.

 

But sleeping means losing his ties to reality, and the nightmares… The nightmares are the worst part of his life now. Because Theo can endure his everyday life. But he can’t fight the things that come to him as night, when his defenses are down, and his mind is at rest.

 

She comes to him at night. Tara. She screams, the screams she made when the Kaiju tore into their armor. She screams, and she begs, and he knows, deep inside, that he could have done something then. They were both piloting. He was supposed to protect her.

 

He failed.

 

The worse nightmares begin with her, wearing a pretty dress, at the official celebration they had when they killed their first Kaiju. She was fourteen, and he was only a year older.

 

She looks so pretty, so free and happy. People are congratulating them, there is cake, and cider. 

 

And then, she looks at him.

 

And she frowns. 

 

You killed me, she says. 

 

It would be easier if he could deny it.

 

* * *

 

He is getting better.

 

Well, his body is.

 

He trains, and he fights against other pilots. He runs, for hours. He make sure his reflexes are optimal.

 

But he can’t look around him. He can’t see the faces of those who still fight. Who still get to experience what it feels like to be connected to someone, so deep inside, that it feels like they are a part of you.

 

Sometimes, Theo wishes he could just leave. Go somewhere else. Do something else. Forget about everything that happened, and find himself another life. 

 

But he hasn’t anything else. He just has himself, without his core. So he does whatever he has to, he trains whenever they want him to. He sleeps, whenever he can. 

 

It’s not a life.

 

Theo is not sure he deserves a life.

 

* * *

 

The day he meets Liam is just an average day. There is not a single thing, a single signal, that could mean it’s a special day. New pilots come every few days, and most of them are asked to leave after awhile. That’s why Theo does not talk to new recruits. They are expendables, to him.

 

But Liam ? Liam knows how to make an impression.


End file.
